We Wish You A Merry Christmas

What a wonderful lead up to Christmas we have had in Elmers. 

The children have loved getting involved in all the fun craft activities on offer, making cards, calenders and tree decorations. 

A wonderful performance was put on for all the Walkley Early Years families showcasing our Elmers as the shining stars. 

Here are some snaps of our wonderful Elmer Christmas

The chidlren had a lovely time decorating the Class Christmas tree. A super activity for developing fine motor skills.

Our role this year in the Christmas performance was the Star!

The children worked very hard cutting out stars and making their own head bands to wear as part of their costumes. 

Children In Need

The children celebrated children in need. 

We talked about how we can help people and how we help each other in our class. 

We loved our coloured spots and learning about the meaning of Pudsey Bear. 

We raised money by buying merchandise and completing our Hula Hoop challenge!

We were very proud of ourselves. 

Brrrrrrr!

As the weather gets colder it creates perfect opportunities for some lovely outdoor learning.

We have been listening the to the story 'Owl Babies' and thinking about where they live, what they eat and where they make their homes. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXP66T2wp-k

The children have loved exploring different night time animals, learning new vocabulary, animal facts and practicing key skills. 

The children loved the Owl Baby small world. Time to relive the story through their own words and also make up new adventure for the characters. 

Enjoying mark making in the 'snow'. The children loved telling me about how the snow felt squishy and slippery. They selected different objects to put into the tray to see what different makes, shapes and patterns we could make. 

The children used pegs and pom poms to create a fluffy, feather paint effect on black card, to paint pictures of our owl babies. 

We were trying to keep our stamping within the boundary line. Always a tricky task for tiny fingers. 

The activity gave the children chance to talk about the story and the characters and also use some of our key language to describe the animals they were painting. 

Not real snow, but some thick winter frost. Another chance to mark make in different ways and also an opportunity to delve into the world of science. We talked about freezing and melting and watched the warm water in the bowl as the stream rose upwards. 

We read another story, 

'Olivers Wood'

Oliver has lots of friends that he sees when he is awake during the night. The children were super at thinking about which animals were awake in the night and asleep during the day. 

We even learnt a new word - Nocturnal.

We wanted to know if any animals visited Elmers while we were asleep so set up some foot print trays to see if we had any visitors. We did manage to see some teeny tiny footprints in the sand. 

Finally one of our favourite activities is den building. We watched a video all about Olivers friends the badgers. We found out that they make big dens and tunnels underground. Here we are in the Badger sett that we made using our classroom furniture. 

Remember, Remember the 5th of November

The Elmers have thoroughly enjoyed learning about Bonfire night. Its a wonderful celebration that brings many opportunities for the children to use their senses to explore, colour, sound, smells and tastes of Autumn alongside learning about how to keep safe around fires and fireworks and who helps us to do this. 

Here the children are learning about colour mixing as they mix the paint to create a fire. 

After reading the story 'Flashing Fire Engines' The children talked about the dangers of fires and fireworks and the important job the Fire Service do to keep us all safe. We then decided to be fire fighters ourselves. We loved dressing up and strengthening our finger muscles by squeezing the water bottles to create a hose and put out the fire that we had painted.

Bonfire night always gives lots of opportunities for using our craft skills and recreating some of the things we had seen and experienced. We made our own rocket fireworks attaching string to make them fly and using a range of different descriptive, sounds and words remembering the fireworks we had heard.

In Maths we talked about things that were big and lings that were small. We talked about fireworks being different sizes and shapes. 

The children helped to make some black playdough and then used pipe cleaners and coloured matchsticks to create their own firework designs. 

Lots of talk about shape, size and colours.  

And last of all...

Forest School! What a super time the children had. We made our own chocolate apples observing how the chocolate changes when we heat it up. We worked as a team to build the most magnificent bonfire using our gross motor skills to carry some very big and heavy logs. We sang songs around the Bonfire and laughed at Mrs English and Mrs Bracken singing their traditional camp fire songs